


Julian

by Aphoride



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Anger, Angst, Community: HPFT, F/M, Friendship, Hemophilia, Loneliness, M/M, Martyrdom, Mild Language, One-Sided Attraction, Scars, Violence, War, Werewolf Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 09:57:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7635805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphoride/pseuds/Aphoride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>March 16th, 1980: Remus Lupin is waiting for the full moon, alone in the mountains of the Lake District. </p>
<p>(He's not dreaming of Sirius, or of martyrdom, and the anger's just the wolf clawing at him, impatient to be out.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Julian

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toomanycurls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomanycurls/gifts).



Julian

_For now I stand as one upon a rock…_

There was something innately comforting, something safe and bitterly sweet, about being alone, he found.

Balanced high on the tip of the mountain’s teeth, looking out and down across the hills and the downs and the still, shining lakes and river which wove their way between the peaks and the troughs both, there was nothing and no one but him. Every now and then a bird cawed as it soared overhead, wingbeats strong and fierce, driving through the wind; but there were no people, no tiny figures in hats and coats moving about, herding sheep with quick, black, darting sheepdogs, sturdy and solitary and steadfast – as much a part of the land, rock and wood, as anything else.

No, down the green slopes of the mountainsides and over the slick silver-blue swathes of water, there was no movement except for the rustling and brushing of the trees as the wind barged through the branches, knocking them into one another; nature’s dominoes.

There was a kind of tranquillity about it he had never felt anywhere else – no matter how happy he had ever been, at Hogwarts, at home, it had never been peaceful.

This place, though, out in the wilderness with no one else around, only animals and rocks for company, somehow unwound every muscle in his body, stretching them out one by one until they no longer tensed automatically, until they no longer ached as a matter of course. It smoothed out the creases in his mind – those stiff, stained wrinkles he didn’t think he’d ever really get rid of completely – which screamed how he must act normal, must act human, mustn’t show what he is in case, in case, in case…

Everything always seemed to be _in case._

Hide in case they find out what you are – who you are. Pretend everything; lie constantly in case someone asks, in case someone suspects. Can’t have those traits, or these, in case they mark you out as something else; can’t sit like this, move like that, smell this, hear that, miss and long and pine for things you’re not meant to meant just in case.

Once, when he’d been tired, the waxing moon biting and champing at the iron bit he’d put over the wolf in his heart, holding it back – because it couldn’t be tamed, could never be tamed (they had tried, hadn’t they? And if that wasn’t tamed, running and playing and friendly, with no bloodshed and no killing, then what was?) – he’d snapped it, shouted it at Professor McGonagall, making her blanch and flinch a little.

He didn’t lose his temper, not often, and he told himself it was just that – but in the back of his mind, he knew it was because in that moment his eyes had seemed lighter, his teeth longer and sharper and everything about him had screamed animal.

_Why do I have to hide,_ he’d asked, _it’s not fair. It’s not right. I shouldn’t have to._

She’d looked at him, worn and old and sad (but wasn’t that both of them, in the end?), and smiled a bit, rueful.

_I know,_ she’d said. _I know._

It had been enough, then, to hear that: that other people knew, that they understood, that he was right and not just making it up, making himself endlessly special compared to his classmates; that he wasn’t trying to adopt the wolf, to embrace what he already was.

That it would be normal to not have to hide, to pretend and to lie constantly.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

But when he was free, free from humanity, from other people’s questioning, curious gazes, he could relax, because what did the animals care about scars or differences in how muscles rippled beneath skin when he moved? They ran before him all the same when he approached, only knowing that he was a bigger, stronger animal, and nothing else.

For them, werewolf and human didn’t mean anything, all they understood was simply ‘bigger predator’ and weren’t humans and werewolves both those?

Laying back on the grass, he twisted his head to and fro, feeling it catching and sticking on twigs and blades of grass, glistening with dew, and sighed to himself as he watched the clouds pass slowly by above: a grey blanket of them, showing the pale blue sky underneath every now and then, and all of it lit up by the sun to glow dully white and dove-grey and baby-blue.

A moment of peace – because under the edge of the horizon, the moon grew fatter and rounder, her edges curving and swelling, and soon enough she would come for him, to claim him as her own and induce him to murder, to slaughter, stirring something dark and desperate out of the depths of his soul.

And then, after that, the war would call again, summoning him home to James and Lily, to Dumbledore, to Sirius and the Order and all the humanoid, whimpering pain it contained.

For now, though, he was nothing – not monster, not animal, not conscious-bearing, moral-toting human – and it was blissful.

* * *

_Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave…_

It sat on the fireplace, his name scrawled on it in messy calligraphy, as though the owner had tried to write badly, had tried to avoid the neat, elegant letters his childhood had given him, and failed, unopened and untouched since the day it arrived.

He wouldn’t read it – what was the point? He knew what it would say: that he must come home, that he’s being stupid, that he should be there, that they miss him, that it’s not the same without him, that it’s suspicious, that he’s suspicious, that he can’t – shouldn’t, ought not to – run away, that his silence is only damning him.

It won’t say _I think_ _you’re the traitor,_ not in so many words, but it was there all the same, in between the insistences and the angry shouts and the blackmail of what they’d all done for him, given for him.

Sirius was angry with him; Sirius had been angry with him for a long time.

(Really, he can’t remember the last time Sirius wasn’t angry with him – or just angry in general. The war had taken a toll on all of them, but it had turned Sirius half-mad, the Black genes, violent and fearless and hateful, bursting out in full bloom, crimson and deep purple.

The worst thing was that it wasn’t his war, not even a war he cared about for anything other than sticking it to his family, positioning himself just opposite his parents in everything: light where they’re dark, muggle-born where they’re pureblood, poor where they’re rich, active where they’re passive.

Except… except that it was all a lie, and he had to bite his tongue whenever Sirius talked about saving the people and rights and honour, about sufferance and solidarity and justice, as though he knew.

He hadn’t said anything to James or Peter – what would be the point?)

His hands were shaking, and he poured himself a small tumbler of ruby port – his father’s favourite, his mother’s archenemy after the bite, after everything changed, but he can’t let go of it just yet – wincing as it went down far too easily. It stung, burned at his throat, the wolf rumbling uncomfortably as the alcohol whipped across his senses, but it was a reminder – he was still human, for now.

Sirius spoke like he wanted to be a martyr – and didn’t he know all about that: about the longing to do something, to be something more than what he was, to give something back, something big, something important, to all those people who had helped him, who had believed in him, who had told him he was more than the mere sum of his parts, werewolf and wizard.

There was nothing else he could do, really, and it seemed only right: they had given him a life, had given him happiness and adventure, more than he deserved. So what if he gave it back to them? So what if it cost him everything?

They had risked everything for him; it was only fair.

(And there was that word again – fair. Always a question of whether or not something was fair, whether someone had been fair, whether life itself was fair. Fair, fair, fair; everyone around him repeated it like a broken record, like some kind of reverent prayer, the axis on which the world should turn, perhaps did turn.

It made him want to scratch, rip at something, a growl bunching up in his throat, hacking and rough. Animal, all animal – now was that fair?)

But then he had always known that, hadn’t he – one of those things he’d learned at any early age, that life wasn’t fair, wasn’t meant to be fair; fairness was only a façade, a pretty front meant to seduce and convince that everything would be sweet and light, a life of summer. A trick, like the glass at the end of a kaleidoscope, turning everything you studied through it into a stained-glass masterpiece, emblazoned with reds and blues and bright, happy yellows.

Life wasn’t fair, and they were all at war, all of them, regardless of beliefs and twisted dreams of martyrdom, and he resolutely tried not to think about the other reason he hated Sirius for shouting about justice and rights, about how he’d run into the next battle, about how people were dying for something and didn’t that just mean everything…

In fact, throwing back another glass of port, he tried not to think of Sirius at all.

* * *

_Here stands my other son, a banish’d man…_

Past midday, thudding relentlessly into the afternoon, towards the evening – time had no sympathy, he mused, for those she swept up in her wake – and the full moon was creeping closer, step by step. Sometimes, he thought he could feel it, feel the wolf inside him growing stronger, stretching and flexing in his stomach, in the very muscle of his heart, even before the moon’s curse took hold: feel the strands of fur pressing against the underside of his skin, ready to burst out; feel his bones creaking and bending, threatening to snap and reform at any moment.

He knew it was only in his head, a simple fiction, but he couldn’t shake it – had never been able to shake it, ever since he was a child and it had plagued him for days before, that final, crushing transformation.

It was at times like this that he missed James and Peter, most of all, and the myriad of little ways, habits and ticks, they’d had to keep him calm, keep his mind occupied while the moon approached and his nerves and anxieties kicked into overdrive. Most of them had been stupid little things – pranking each other, throwing cushions and shirts and James’ old, punctured Quaffle at each other across their dorm – but others had been softer, kinder: the chocolate Peter always sneaked out of the kitchens with for him, the way James had always sentenced him to bed and rest, lying through his teeth when teachers asked and assuring Madam Pomfrey that all was well.

(He definitely didn’t miss Sirius, whose energy had never done well in confinement, in quiet, stoic sorts of places, and the way he’d spent minutes every full moon hanging around the edge of his bed, hands in his pockets, looking out of place and entirely uncertain as to what he was meant to do, usually cracking and offering to get water before bounding away, down and away from the tower and his own inability to help.

Really, he didn’t. Sirius was a storm even in calm, even when calm was needed, and in recent years that couldn’t even tag onto affection, instead sending irritation prickling up his spine.

He didn’t miss Sirius, honest, but he wasn’t sure if he was glad he wasn’t there either.)

Pulling off his clothes, he stepped through his bedroom in half a dozen strides and into the cramped bathroom, squeezing himself between the sink and the door before closing it behind him.

The cottage was cheap enough that he didn’t have to ask James for money to pay to use it and the owner didn’t ask questions, didn’t even seem concerned that he only ever wanted it for two nights a month as long as he was paid in advance the place was clean when he came by to collect the keys on the third day – but the entire thing would probably have fitted inside the Gryffindor Tower boys’ dorm they’d shared at school.

It’d have definitely fitted inside his parents’ house, garden included, and he’d never have claimed their house was large, by any standard.

He couldn’t complain, though – or wouldn’t complain, but the difference, he’d always thought, was negligible.

Turning on the shower, he didn’t wait for the water to warm up, stepping into it and feeling the cold water pummel into his skin, hard and refreshing and brutally honest. As he grabbed the soap, the light glinted off the scars on his arm, a mismatch of silver and pink tracing over and over across the lines of his muscles, up and down the length of his arm, spreading to the rest of him.

He didn’t remember getting most of them, what they were from or when they were from, how old they were, in the way that most people told stories with the marks on their bodies, the emotions and facts of the moment written into the raised flesh or the blood pooling underneath, the dips created in the skin by something or someone.

(He remembered the bite on his left shoulder, though, remembered how that had happened in detail: the way the moonlight had slanted across the back garden, the red and green flashes – sickly and violently bright – from his father’s wand, the sound of the wolf’s breath and his own screams, his mind floating dismembered above his own body…)

“This one was when I bumped into the table at breakfast,” Regulus had told him, running a finger, light and soft, over a red blossom on his hip, darkening to purple in the middle; the finger moved, then, to a smaller one, slim and shaped like a pale red worm running along the joint of his elbow. “This one, here, was from Quidditch practice – the blood seeped into the joint and I nearly crashed.

“This one,” his fingers had brushed, slowly, tentatively, over a bruise on his neck, oval-shaped and fresh, and he gave a coy smile, heavy dark eyelashes splaying shadows over his high, pale cheekbones. “Was from something else entirely.”

Weeks spent in the Hospital Wing together, _Madam Pomfrey’s two twin terminal cases_ Regulus had once joked, dark eyes dancing, for once oblivious to how his stomach was turning and twisting at the thought that oh god, what if Regulus knew, what if his secret was out, had formed a strange sort of camaraderie between them.

They weren’t friends – Regulus was superior, haughty, secretive and delicately dangerous, even with the bruises and the bleeding and the few scattered secrets he’d become privy to – but they weren’t enemies.

They had common enemies, Regulus had said once, in time and in health; why not at least pretend to be friendly?

Regulus had never asked, though, about his scars, had never questioned anything about them – his gaze flicked over, every time they were in the infirmary together again, cool and disinterested, before dropping back to whatever book he was reading, an antique delivered by owl from home.

They never talked about anything important, though, about how or why or what exactly it was they each had, and they never, ever mentioned Sirius. Sometimes, it was difficult, when he would come loping into the Hospital Wing like James’ handsome, taller shadow, Peter trailing behind as always, ignoring his little brother with a stubbornness which was all Black.

He’d never missed, though, the hurt and the resentment and the cold, calculating anger Regulus always gave off every time it happened; he didn’t miss either how it intensified after Sirius had run away, after he’d shouted down their mother, thrown away his inheritance and his family, and been blasted out of the family tree and the will and everything else.

(He didn’t miss either, in that last, turbulent year at school, when he and Sirius were barely speaking and he’d nearly bitten his lip through in an attempt to not bitch about Sirius to Regulus, the way Regulus eyes had lingered at times – sultry and deep – on James, or the way James’ eyes had followed Regulus, tracing imaginary lines across his arms and his neck and his face.

He never said anything – he liked James and he liked Regulus, and he didn’t care enough about Sirius to want to hurt him enough.)

Then, he’d thought Regulus was arrogant and hasty, childish in his hatred of his brother; now, though, he thought he understood him a bit better.

He turned off the shower: he was shivering from head to foot, his teeth chattering and his hands shaking when he reached for the towel, but he felt a little less tired and it reminded him, above everything else, that he was still human – would still be, for those last few hours.

* * *

_Thou hast no hands to wipe away thy tears…_

There were drops of water, small and perfectly round, littering his reply to Lily, setting the ink to run, blurring _the_ into _Emmeline_ and _safe_ into _Your_ ; the big, round ‘D’ of Death now looked like a black dot, a careless splodge on the page, a gaping hole into which everything else would fall – appropriate, he thought, as he attempted to mop it all up with the last tissue.

Eventually, he simply decided that the parchment was beyond saving, a thin, weak beige which was falling apart at the slightest pressure, and scraped it all into a cupped hand, throwing it into the bin unceremoniously.

Lily had been worried about him; her last letter had come two days ago, demanding that he write back as soon as he could, that he come for dinner in the next week, and that he should speak to James – and Sirius; it hadn’t been said, but it had been implied. He’d been trying to write a reply for hours, so now he’d have to start all over again.

Secretly, though, he thought that was probably a good thing. He hadn’t been getting anywhere anyway.

Padding around the room, the ends of his hair still occasionally dripping water onto his shoulders, running in tiny rivulets down his back, delicate and cool, he busied himself with sorting things out: folding up his two patched jumpers and tucking them away in the drawers, straightening up the tins on the shelf in the kitchen so their labels all faced forwards.

It didn’t take nearly as long as he’d have liked, and the slight tremor in his hands – nerves, all nerves, all human and no animal, he was sure – was a bit more noticeable than usual, but that was okay, wasn’t it?

This was the worst part of every moon: the waiting, sitting around and counting down the hours, down the minutes until finally, he’d be freed and chained simultaneously – until the pain and the relief and the bliss of knowing nothing and feeling virtually nothing, his senses limited, his consciousness gone, lost somewhere along the journey from man to beast.

He could almost live with that, he knew what to expect and when to expect it, how it would hurt and how it would burn, but he’d never managed to deal with this.

Sirius had never been able to deal with it either – it was one of the things they’d bonded over: the frustration and the anxiety, the desperate need to do, even if it was painful and horrible and would make them cry quietly into their pillows at night for a week.

That and hot chocolate, in large, black ceramic mugs in front of the fire in Gryffindor Tower, when Peter had gone to bed and James was out on rounds, his Invisibility Cloak stuffed into his pocket in a habit he never explained. They never really talked during those evenings, but the silence was sweet and strangely gentle, and in those moments he could forget how Sirius had tried to use him as a weapon, use his curse as a weapon to murder someone else.

He could forget, then, how Sirius hadn’t thought his life was worth more than that of Snape, who he hated with a passion most people reserved for love.

“How can you forgive him?” Lily had asked him once, when they’d been locked away together in the Library, a sea of books – textbooks, article collections, original texts – floating around them, hiding every inch of the table’s surface. “I mean, I know he was your friend before, and James forgave him so it might have made things difficult – but I just… I don’t know how you can do it.”

He had shrugged, then, the answer whispering itself to him softly, gently, at the back of his mind, like a breath of wind pressing against a glass door, easing it open.

“He doesn’t deserve it, you know,” she had told him, compassionate and righteously angry, her green eyes almost glowing in the dim candlelight.

_I know,_ he’d said in reply, and his voice had been flat and dull – and that had been that.

He knew. He knew and he did it anyway; he was an idiot.

(Sirius had apologised – of course he had, James had made him, Peter had made him; Dumbledore and McGonagall had made him. He’d talked about _betrayal_ and _trust_ , s _ecrecy_ and _friendship,_ calling himself _stupid_ and _reckless_.

It had taken him a full week to realise that Sirius had never actually apologised for putting Snape him danger, for putting him in danger, only for shouting out his secret, for being a bad friend.

He hadn’t slept that night, when he’d realised, spending the hours wondering what that meant – for Sirius and for him. For their friendship, really.)

“Sirius breaks the things he loves,” he remembered Regulus telling him once, authoritative and sombre, a judge passing sentence on a thief. “Everything he likes or wants or cares about, he just throws at the walls again and again and again until it smashes into tiny pieces.” 

It had been true, then, but he’d only had the courage – or the ability, or the willingness or the thousand and one other little things he needed to have – to admit it to himself recently. He could see clearly now, could see the black and the white and the myriad of bright, blooming colours which made up Sirius without painting him over in pale, gentle pink.

_Maybe I fell in with the wrong Black brother,_ he’d joked, and in the moment when Regulus tilted his head back – a movement all his, entirely all him – he’d looked so like Sirius in the sunlight through the window, how it glinted off his hair (longer, a good inch and a half longer then) and his eyes (grey and changeable, running the full spectrum from wandlight-silver to storm-grey, whereas Sirius’ were a solid, durable granite), it had made something twist, uncomfortable and hot, in his stomach.

Sinking into the chair, he curved his fingers over the end of the armrests, resting his head on the back of it, the wood grating and itching against his scalp, hard and unforgiving.

He hadn’t thought about Sirius in days, hadn’t seen him in weeks; was it right or wrong that he couldn’t bring himself to feel worried or nervous or afraid about the silence?

Then again, what did right or wrong mean these days, where their classmates shouted about dreaming of martyring themselves for causes which weren’t theirs, and every word you thought was a secret only you could know. Then again, he was a werewolf – some would argue what had right or wrong ever meant to people like him, forever caught halfway between.

* * *

_Thy brothers are condemn’d and dead by this._

He felt it stir, raising its head and sniffing, snuffling at its fur, at its surroundings, when the first of the sun’s rays began to dip below the horizon, casting an orange glow across the land as it slipped behind, the pale blue sky – clear now, free of clouds and birds and stars – taunting him even as it darkened shade by shade, spreading across the sky from east to west like ink in a pond.

It was strong, as always, and relentless, fierce in how it pulled at him, yanking and scratching at the chains he put on it, threatening to break its own neck in an attempt to be free – either that or rip the ends out of the ground, wearing it constantly, an iron crown fit for any monster. Pressing on the edge of his mind, it whined and begged, tail beating at the ground, an overgrown, hungry dog.

He staggered to the back door, stumbling outside, his limbs feeling like lead, stiff and heavy, and his tongue lolling around in his mouth. When he fell, hitting the ground on all fours, reflexes not his own but undeniably his, his breath came in pants, harsh and quick, hacking at the back of his throat, drying it out until he could taste sand.

All I’m missing, he thought, is the vipers and the scorpions; then I could martyr myself on this, could string myself up and let myself catch fire. Might as well do it properly, after all, might as well…

The colours in the world were fading, darkening and dulling. He knew the sky would be purple and red and blue now, a shimmer of jewels, but as he watched, crooking his neck awkwardly to look, something began to wash out the colours, a sloppy artist trying to wipe the slate clean with water, weakening and weakening the mistakes until it was light enough, dim enough to start again. On the ground, the grass was black, all around him, flecks of dark grey here and there, and the shadows had lengthened, stretching out across towards him, creeping over twigs and stones.

That night, maybe he’d finally run to the sea, run all the way there and all the way back before the moon sank and the sun rose again to mock him – maybe he’d get there and jump in as he’d always wanted to do, feel the water rise up to meet him, swift and numbing, and carry him away to some far off land, mystical and magical.

A laugh bubbled in his throat, thick with bile and saliva, and he coughed, arching his back and spitting, hacking like a cat.

It always felt like going mad, he thought – though for that, he supposed, he’d have to ask Sirius for clarification. Oh, how good the final bitter taste was before it all vanished under the scent of rats and fat, juicy rabbits as they hopped about the mountains, nibbling here and there.

James wouldn’t approve, wouldn’t like it, would frown and draw his lips together severely. James didn’t like it when he and Sirius didn’t get on, when Sirius hissed and snapped at Peter, at Lily. James had, in a way, out-grown them all, wise enough to know he didn’t want to die, wise enough to know he might do, no matter what happened.

_Every man is a martyr_ , he vaguely recalled reading somewhere once. Every man, it had said, and that had stung – what if you’re not a man, what if you’re more or less or just something else. Why couldn’t they all be martyrs, too? Why couldn’t they die for beliefs, for causes just the same as anyone else, and be remembered for it, with eulogies and homilies to praise and revere them?

It was a strange dream, martyrdom, but they were in a war, and he had nothing left, nothing else…

(Except the shuddering, screaming climax as he felt his bones bending inwards and outwards until they snapped, and his mind finally, finally fell asleep again, fleeing back into its own cage as the wolf, awake and alert and teeth gleaming with hunger, snapped its chains and straightened, ears pricking, reclaiming its body at last.

Except that; he would always have that.)

* * *

**A/N:** Section titles are from Titus Andronicus, and so belong to Shakespeare and not me. The title of the story comes from Julian of Antioch, who was martyred in the fourth century - though there are a few saints called Julian who were martyred, so sort of all of them? :P 

For Rose, because I owed you one for long enough, and since Remus is your favourite character and everything, why not? :) You're amazing <3 

(Is unedited. Will edit at some point soon!) 


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